Unblackboxing Digital Services - Spotlight on Data and Interaction
Daniel Rau
2021
Digitalization enables new business models, innovative products, and digital services. Despite its rapid progress in practice, there are only few theoretical insights into digital services. This cumulative doctoral thesis analyzes digital services in selected industries and considers their specifics regarding data and interaction. An in-depth examination of taxonomy design as a method to analyze emerging phenomena such as digital services complements this thesis. First, this doctoral thesis
more »
... yzes privacy and proactivity as two cross-industry phenomena in the context of digital services. Despite the prevailing opinion of data privacy as a necessary evil, the research article #1 takes an upside perspective on data privacy. Based on the well-established Kano model, the article empirically shows that the implementation of certain data privacy measures has the potential to delight consumers. The privacy-aware analysis of consumers' personal and contextual data can help organizations to anticipate consumer needs. On this basis, digital services facilitate proactive interaction between the organization and consumers or on behalf of consumers. The research article #2 analyzes such proactive digital services through the empirical and conceptual design of a taxonomy; the article also applies the taxonomy on exemplary proactive services and evaluates it through expert interviews. Second, this thesis investigates the application of digital services in two selected industries. The Internet of Things (IoT) has facilitated connectivity between devices with sensors and actuators (e.g., speakers and washing machines) and the Internet. In retail commerce, this connectivity has led to novel ways of how products and services can be ordered online. The research article #3 refers to this phenomenon of "IoT-commerce". Building on the methodological foundation of the activity and affordance theories and supported by literature review and empirical validation, this article proposes opportunities of IoT-commerce for consumers (i.e., af [...]
doi:10.15495/epub_ubt_00005253
fatcat:anucifxf5zen3m5qyiv5wlg3ba